from hello to goodbye

Today marks the 4Th anniversary of our arrival in Misawa, Japan. It was an arduous journey here. We left Italy, had a stop over in Portugal. This being a military contracted flight we all had to get off the plane and wait while the plane is refueled and inspected. We were on the bus to get back onto the plane and continue our journey to America when the bus was stopped and we were told to remain seated. We could see the plane, but had to sit on the bus for about an hour. This was in February 2003, most of the people who were on the bus and on the plane were coming home from the Persian Gulf. This was before we invaded Iraq, did you know that the Air Force has had people deployed to the Gulf since 1991, people have been having to serve in this area and have been shot at and away from family for 16 years. Anyways, most of the people on the plane were Air Force people's returning from their tour in the gulf. While deployed in the Gulf you are not allowed to drink any alcohol at all, even when you are not on duty. There were a bunch of young men on our bus, sitting looking at the plane, and they had managed to acquire a suitcase full of little liquor bottles and began to pass the liquor around our bus. I guess we decided to have a good time on the bus. Too bad I was 20 weeks pregnant with Little Miss Lily, who we were sure was a Howard Eugene at the time. Turns out that one of the women who was in Saudi was also pregnant and this being the reason for her return from the Gulf, she was very sick and they were seeing if she had to be evacuated from the plane or if she could continue on the journey to America. Evacuation would mean that all the plane's luggage would have to be removed, hers found and then everyone else's reloaded. Hours. So the doctors gave her an iv of liquid and she was able to continue on with the flight.

Our plane was scheduled to land in Washington DC in the morning. However, the airport was fogged in. Our plane was redirected to Pittsburgh, however, there weren't any customs officials working in Pittsburgh at the time so we were not allowed to get off the plane. This was a plane that came from an American military base in Italy and then in Portugal. Filled with military and family only, still we could not get off the plane without being cleared through customs. So the plane was refueled and we left Pittsburgh to circle Washington until the fog cleared or we ran out of gas. When we finally landed, our connecting flight to South Carolina had already taken off. We were told the next flight was in several hours and then we wouldn't be able to connect to Roanoke until the next day. We decided to rent a van and drive to Roanoke instead.

We arrived in Roanoke and had a lovely visit with the family. The motel we had booked off the Internet which allowed pets (we were traveling with our precious Daisy the cat from hell). Our motel room reeked of cigarette smoke and me being preggers this caused my all day sickness to increase and I had several lovely sessions with the toilet. We spent a week or so visiting with Jeff's family and we were then off to visit my brother in Salt Lake City. Of course our plane was delayed. We arrived in our connecting city Philadelphia with the cat and with no flights into Salt Lake City until the next day. We found a hotel that would allow us to have a cat, bought a new cat box and some litter and spent the night. Actually the hotel was lovely and we even had a lovely dinner. We made our way to Salt Lake City the next day and had a lovely few days visiting my brother and his family. I hadn't seen them in years. Hadn't even met his daughter who was about four at the time and hadn't seen his son since he was a tiny baby. So that was lovely, except they are smokers and that made me so so sick.

Next stop was Seattle. We stayed there a few days. We had to find a veterinarian to certify our cat was still not sick as we were in the States for more than two weeks and our current certification expired after two weeks. This cost of about $100 for the vet to look at our cat for about 5 seconds. So fun. Then began our flight to Japan. This was another military flight, we had to stop at several bases in Japan before arriving in Misawa. We had to get off the plane, sit around for hours and get back on the plane. The whole trip took more than 24 hours. We arrived in Japan our new home, got off the plane and it was raining.

Jeff's workmates met us at the airport, and helped us get our stuff and our cat to billeting (military for hotel). By then the rain had turned to snow. We should have been ready for an 8 day sleep in but after taking showers we felt a bit hungry and were ready to sample some fine Japanese cuisine. We called a taxi and asked to be taken to a Japanese restaurant. Our taxi driver did not speak a word of English and took us instead to the Japanese police department. We finally convinced him to take us to a restaurant by miming eating and chewing. Very American. This is how we discovered the New Miayki, our favorite restaurant in Misawa. We eat there every year to commemorate our anniversary. It also snowed 19 inches that night, and has snowed around that much every year on our anniversary since our arrival. This winter it hasn't really snowed all that much at all, which is very weird, since it usually snows at least 100 inches every winter, this winter I think we have had less than 20 inches. So I wonder if we will get our annual big snow? Still tonight we dine at our lovely New Miayki which by the way is a Chinese restaurant, I usually get the sweet and sour chicken.